Self-styled radical cleric Omar Bakri, who was deported from Britain in 2005, never advocated a terrorist attack on Dublin airport and is now 'retired', he tells Mary Fitzgeraldin Lebanon
The man once known to the tabloids as Britain's most dangerous is complaining about his weight. Since his ignominious departure to Lebanon two years ago, Omar Bakri has grown more rotund and he doesn't like it. It's because his wife is still in London, he grumbles, which means he is forced to eat out at restaurants all the time. The day is an unseasonably warm one in Tripoli, a coastal town some two hours drive from Beirut, and Bakri struggles with the rising heat as we walk along the Mediterranean shore. Dressed in a white galabiyah and navy blue overshirt that falls just short of his sturdy black brogues, he pats away droplets of perspiration from his reddening face with one hand while using the other to balance his walking cane.
"You know, apart from my family and my brothers, the only thing I miss about Britain is the weather," he says. "The air conditioning is on full blast in my house to make it cold like in Britain. I'm fat and fat people feel the heat more."
The self-styled radical cleric can be difficult to pin down, I'd been warned. "He's charming but very much a slippery fish," one person familiar with Bakri told me. It is the man himself who perhaps unwittingly reinforces the sense that Omar Bakri has many different faces. A casual query about his wife's name elicits this reply: "A good Salafi [someone who follows the same rigid interpretation of Islam as Bakri] never reveals the name of his wife and never reveals his true ideology."
Even his background remains sketchy. Often described as Syrian-born, he has been quoted in interviews talking about his childhood in Syria. Nothing but media lies, he retorts when I ask him about his reported birthplace. "I have never set foot in Syria in my life. I am Lebanese. The media always distorts everything to do with Omar Bakri." It's hard not to wonder if his response has anything to do with Lebanese media reports claiming Syrian authorities want to question him.
THIS MUCH IS known about the man whose family name, Fostok, means "pistachio" in Arabic: after joining radical Islamist movements in different parts of the Middle East, Bakri fled to the UK in the 1980s and claimed political asylum. There he met with the other radical Muslim clerics and ideologues who would later form the backbone of what became known as "Londonistan".
Bakri set up and later quit the London branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical group that seeks to establish a global caliphate (Islamic federal government) and is outlawed in several countries. Barred from preaching at several mosques, he formed Al-Muhajiroun, taking its name from those who accompanied the prophet Muhammad when he fled Mecca. Drawing most of its membership from young disenchanted Muslims, the group mixed jihadist rhetoric with virulent anti-Semitism and homophobia, gaining notoriety and acres of press coverage due to Bakri's inflammatory pronouncements. Whether it was proclaiming John Major a "legitimate target" during the 1991 Gulf war or outlining his dream to see Britain become an Islamic state ruled by sharia law, with "the black flag of Islam" hoisted over Downing Street, Bakri could always be relied on for a provocative quote.
Dubbed the "Tottenham ayatollah", he enjoyed what many of his Muslim critics say was a symbiotic relationship with the media, which indulged him as a cartoonish bogeyman whose bombast was considered so outrageous it could not be taken seriously. But that was before 9/11, Madrid, Bali, 7/7, and everything in between - before all the talk of jihad became a terrifying reality. Bakri soon became a hate figure for the tabloids, particularly when he described the September 11th hijackers as "the magnificent 19" and insisted US and British government policies were to blame for 9/11 and the London bombings.
LATE LAST YEAR, Bakri hit the headlines again after a BBC report alleged he advocated a terrorist attack on Dublin airport. An undercover operative from Vigil, a group made up of former police and intelligence personnel, infiltrated an internet chatroom allegedly used by Bakri and asked him whether Dublin airport should be considered a terrorist target, mistakenly identifying it as the Irish airport through which US troops transit on the way to Iraq. A voice identified by a voice recognition expert as Bakri's replied: "Hit the target and hit it very hard, that issue should be understood." Bakri denies it. "I don't recall any question like this. We record all the questions and answers given in the chatroom and there is nothing like this. Nothing about Dublin issues, about Ireland, about hit or hit hard."
So are you saying they made it up? "I believe so, or they applied an answer to other issues to this Dublin thing. Why would I be interested in Dublin or Ireland? I have no problem with Ireland. I like Irish people [he laughs], I have no problem with them." But if one of your followers asked whether Shannon airport is considered a target because US troops stop there, what would you say? "Look, I had never even heard of this airport before now. I had never seen anything in the news about it. I don't even know how to pronounce its name."
But knowing now that Shannon is a fuelling stop for US soldiers, would you consider it a target? "I don't have my own personal opinion on that but I can tell you how Islam sees it. It is forbidden for any Muslim living in Ireland to carry out an attack there whether on the Government or the people. Muslims living in a non-Muslim country have a covenant of security with the people they live with. This is what I believe because these are the facts according to Islam.
"However, if someone was to ask me what I think of American soldiers taking fuel in any territory outside the US, I would say that this is something that will provoke the Muslim community, but not necessarily allow Muslims to attack."
Would you apply the same thinking to the London bombings? "Yes, it's the very same thing. Even 9/11. I remember on 9/11 I prayed to God that the people who were involved were not Muslims who are living in the US because Islam forbids us to attack those we live among. However, people from abroad have no covenant of security with the US so it is allowed for them."
BEFORE IT WAS disbanded in 2004, one of Al-Muhajiroun's spokesmen was Khalid Kelly, a former Irish nurse who converted to Islam while serving a prison term for distilling and selling alcohol in Saudi Arabia. Bakri speaks warmly of Kelly but grows testy when asked about his following in Ireland. "Are you trying to portray me as someone who has recruited people there and whose objective is to destroy Ireland? You have not asked me once about my ideology," he snaps.
"We don't have a branch in Ireland. It is not a relevant arena for me because I don't have people there. If, in the past, there were individual members who were Irish I don't know where they are now because Al-Muhajiroun has been dissolved. Most of them were young, either converts or married to Muslims. But Ireland is definitely not on our map."
Bakri now divides his time between Beirut and Tripoli but says he has no contact with his mother and sister, both of whom live in Lebanon. Like most of his family, he explains, they are "chocolate Muslims" - Bakri's preferred insult for those who hold views more moderate than his. Describing himself as "retired", he says he spends his days writing and working on a friend's farm. Asked how he paid for the sleek black SUV he arrived in that morning, Bakri answers: "Oh, I sell a lot of my sermons on CD and DVD. "I'm not poor, I'm rich," he adds, stroking his grey-streaked beard.
Revelling in his own notoriety - "I'm infamous just like sheikh bin Laden," he trills at one point - Bakri can be touchy about the way he is perceived. I mention Jon Ronson's book on extremists in which Ronson writes of a phone conversation he had with Bakri after his arrest in 2001. According to Ronson, Bakri was anxious and asked him: "Why don't people believe me when I tell them that I am just a harmless clown?" Hearing this, Bakri's face clouds over and he gets up to leave the seafront table where we have been sitting. "You're trying to play clever, aren't you? Don't play with me," he exclaims angrily.
"I will leave, turn my back forever and you go to hell. You don't need to ask about this . . . you know it is impossible for anyone to say I am a clown."
Minutes later the tantrum has subsided and he sits down again to complain about how the British government and media got Omar Bakri wrong. "This idea that I planned some action or that I have links with jihadis or al-Qaeda is a complete misconception," he claims. "Not because it is a shame for me, it would be an honour for me to have those links, but I don't and I never had. But the media called me bin Laden's spokesman and the police were focusing so much on my organisation that they were unaware of the real danger. When that came on 7/7, it was a real surprise for them.
"The British government will remember what I was able to do. People like me were safeguards, we held the youth back when they were angry and wanted to take action. We told them it was not allowed under Islam. The Muslims who used to listen to Omar Bakri have no one now.
"They go to the internet instead, where they can get a justification for anything, they are being pushed underground. There is no longer any guidance and that is the danger."